Firefighters Flooded Rig, Caused Oil Spill, Suit Says

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- The worst oil spill in U.S. history
was triggered by firefighting boats that flooded the Deepwater
Horizon drilling rig with water, causing it to sink into the
Gulf of Mexico and damage BP Plc’s well, a lawsuit claims.

Commercial fishermen, waterfront property owners and oil
industry workers who have lost jobs because of the oil spill
yesterday sued 17 companies whose fireboats responded to the
explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon on April 20. The rig was
still attached to the subsea well when it sank two days later.

“It was the flooding of the Deepwater Horizon and the
resulting sinking of the rig that directly caused the piping to
break and begin spewing millions of gallons of oil into the
ocean,” Lloyd Frischhertz and Gerald Maples, lawyers for the
spill victims, said in a complaint filed in federal court in New
Orleans.

The lawsuit doesn’t seek damages from BP, rig-owner
Transocean Ltd. or the U.S. Coast Guard, which helped direct the
firefighting effort. The plaintiffs claim the fireboats violated
industry standard procedures that warn against using water
cannons to attack pressurized oil fires aboard marine vessels.

“Any request or encouragement by U.S. Coast Guard, British
Petroleum or Transocean to pump water and use water cannons’’
for extended periods to fight the fire “should have been met
with protest and refusal,’’ according to the complaint.

50,000 Gallons

As many as eight fireboats each shot “10,000 to 50,000
gallons of seawater on the rig per minute,” according to the
complaint. They flooded the rig’s upper compartments and
destabilized it, causing it to tip over and sink, the plaintiffs
said.

The fireboats should have used their “dynamic positioning
systems” to hold the Deepwater Horizon in place while fighting
the fire with industry-approved methods, the complaint alleged.
That would have kept the rig connected to the well with an
intact riser, “greatly enhancing the ability to manage and
control the discharge of oil,” the complaint said.

The plaintiffs asked to proceed on behalf of all commercial
fisherman, charter-boat operators and other businesses affected
by the spill; property owners whose land was fouled; and oil
workers who lost work because of the U.S.-imposed halt in
offshore drilling. They’re asking the court for compensatory and
punitive damages.

Molly Hottinger, a spokeswoman for Seacor Holdings Inc.,
parent of defendant Seacor Marine, declined to comment. Les Van
Dyke, a spokesman for Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc., a unit of
which is also a defendant in the suit, didn’t immediately return
a call for comment.

The case is Robin v. Seacor Marine LLC, 2:10-cv-01986, U.S.
District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).